Quoth Mantis:
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You remembered two of the water clock passages I'd forgotten--the one I'm vaguely thinking of is the one used to explain how the master of the house's clock manages to stop "precisely" at the moment that the master dies . . . mainly that with all the deathbed activity, none of the slaves fills the water pan for the clock, then when the doctor wants to jot down the time of death he looks at the clock, which stopped at some arbitrary time, and the doctor uses that time as being as good as any, and everybody else goes "whoo" (and the master's dog begins to howl since they've forgotten to feed him as well as water the clock <g>).
A bit of spooky magic explained in flat commonsense terms.
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Can't remember where this one comes from.
Spoken by Thecla. Which makes the magician conducting Severian's anacrisis say "whoo" as Sev's in solitary and Thecla's dead. There's a simple explanation, of course. (And Severian continues to come up with simple explanations for the jungle magicks until it's almost too late.)
raster at highfiber.com